Taxi from Colombo Airport to Nuwara Eliya, fixed price private transfer

The route runs E03 to the E04 Central Expressway, then the A1 towards Kandy before turning south onto the A5 at Peradeniya. From there it climbs continuously through Gampola, Pussellawa and Ramboda to the plateau. Four and a half hours is our planning figure and five and a half in the wet season, when the upper sections slow down. The first ninety minutes are expressway and easy; everything after Kandy is the mountain, and the average speed for the last sixty kilometres is closer to thirty kilometres an hour than sixty.

The A5 above Pussellawa is what this transfer is about. It gains more than a thousand metres in around forty kilometres, in a continuous series of bends cut into the tea slopes, and it is shared with lorries carrying tea down and buses coming up. The surface is good and the road is fully paved; what makes it slow is that there is almost nowhere to overtake safely, so a single loaded lorry sets the pace for everyone behind it. From mid-afternoon, cloud settles on the escarpment above Ramboda and visibility can drop to a few dozen metres within minutes, which is the single best argument for leaving the airport early. In the north-east monsoon, roughly October to December, small landslips on the Ramboda section are common enough to be worth building an hour of margin around. If anyone in your party gets motion sick, take something before Kandy rather than when it starts.

This is one of the few routes where we would actively steer you away from the economy sedan, and the reason is the climb rather than the distance. Four hours with an hour and a half of continuous bends is a different experience in a car with softer suspension and more space, and the comfort sedan is the sensible minimum for two people. For four, the comfort van rather than the four-seat comfort sedan: its longer wheelbase settles better through the switchbacks than a short vehicle with luggage stacked at roof height, and everyone gets a window, which matters when the road is bending. Bring a jacket you can reach without opening the boot. It is often twenty-five degrees at the airport and ten in Nuwara Eliya, and that gap surprises people every single time.

The train to Nanu Oya, the station for Nuwara Eliya, is one of the great railway journeys in the world and we will not pretend otherwise. It also does not begin at the airport: you would travel into Colombo, take a train that runs six to seven hours, and then a tuk-tuk for the last ten kilometres uphill. Reserved seats sell out weeks ahead in season. Our honest recommendation is the same as for Ella: take the car on arrival, when you are tired and carrying everything, and do the hill-country rail leg later in your trip, unencumbered, in the direction and on the day that suits you.

Leave the airport before midday if the flight allows. Arriving before the afternoon cloud makes the last hour both faster and considerably more pleasant, and hotel access roads up here are steep, narrow and unlit after dark. February to April is the driest and busiest stretch, and April in particular is the Sri Lankan season, when the town fills for the New Year and hotel prices double. Nights are between eight and twelve degrees year-round, and the hill-country rain does not really follow the two monsoons the way the coasts do; it can rain here in any month. Ramboda Falls sits directly on the route and a working tea factory with a tasting is the other stop most people take, each adding about half an hour.